Maquiladoras

Those U.S. firms that have factories just outside the United States/Mexican border in areas that have been specially designated by the Mexican government. In such areas, factories cheaply assemble goods for export back into the United States.

Fordist Production

Post Fordist Production

World economic system characterized by a more flexible set of production practices in which goods are not mass-produced; instead, productions has been accelerated and dispersed around the globe by multinational companies that shift production, outsourcing it around the world and bringing places closer together in time and space than would have been imaginable at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Bulk Gaining Industry

Break of Bulk Point

A location where transfer is possible from one mode of transportation to another. i.e. a steel mill near the port of Baltimore receives iron ore by ship from South AMerica and coal by train from Appalachia.

Material Orientation

The tendency of an economic activity to locate near or at its source of raw material; this is experienced when material costs are highly variable spatially and/or represent a significant share of total costs

Footloose Industries

Substitution Principle

Principle that maintains that the correct location of a production facility is where the net profit is the greatest. Therefore in industry, there is a tendency to substitute one factor of production (e.g., labor) for another (e.g., capital for automated equipment) in order to achieve optimum plant location.

Labor-Intensive Industry

Agglomeration

A process involving the clustering or concentrating of people or activities. The term often refers to manufacturing plants and businesses that benefit from close proximity because they share skilled-labor pools and technological and financial amenities.

Agglomeration Economy

High- Tech Corridor

Areas along or near major transportation arteries that are devoted to the research, development and sale of high-technology products. These areas develop because of the networking and synergistic advantages of concentrating high-tchnology enterprises in close proximity to one another. "Silicon Valley" is a prime example.

Technopole

Locational Interdependence

Theory developed by economist Harold Hotelling that suggests competitors, in trying to maximize sales, will seek to constrain each other's territory as much as possible which will therefore lead them to locate adjacent to one another in the middle of their collective customer base.

New International Division of Labor

Structural Adjustments

Economic policies imposed on less developed countries by international agencies to create conditions encouraging international trade, such s raising taxes, reducing government spending, controlling inflation, selling publicly owned utilities to private corporations, and charging citizens for more services.